UK Considers Incentives for Carmakers to Add Vehicle-to-Grid Charging

The government consultation, which closed on Friday, set out plans under which carmakers could earn a credit for selling cars equipped with V2G, also called bidirectional charging, according to the report. That credit could allow a manufacturer to sell another petrol car without facing fines if it misses ZEV targets.

The government is preparing to cut electric vehicle sales targets under the ZEV mandate. Environmental groups are braced for changes that could mean an additional 147m tonnes of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by 2050, The Guardian reported.

V2G technology is not yet widely used. It can send power back to the grid or power a driver’s home, and could help balance the system during still, cloudy or dark periods when wind and solar generation is below demand. Home batteries can perform the same function. Smart charging tariffs already encourage EV owners to charge when electricity is abundant and cheap, reducing the need to pay renewable generators to switch off.

Ben Nelmes, chief executive of the thinktank New AutoMotive, said vehicle-to-grid could help balance the grid and cut bills, but carmakers should be rewarded only if the technology is actually used, not merely fitted. He said that under the proposals one or even two extra credits worth around £4,000 each would hand manufacturers thousands per car for equipment costing a few hundred pounds, even though few drivers own the expensive charger needed to use it. Ministers should ensure that drivers and billpayers benefit, not carmakers’ shareholders, he said.

Vicky Edmonds, chief executive of the Electric Vehicle Association England, which represents drivers, said millions of EV drivers in the UK were not using V2G or storage technologies. She said consumers were still focused on the cost of their car, the cost of charging and whether an EV meets daily needs. She added that it was far too early to give manufacturers a credit that effectively allows them to sell fewer EVs for a technology that has not been tried and tested at scale by drivers in the real world.

Some drivers already sell electricity back to the grid through companies including Octopus Energy in the UK, Renault in France and BMW in Germany, according to the report. Octopus Energy has claimed drivers could save £620 a year with the service.

The National Energy System Operator, which balances Great Britain’s grid, estimates that electricity supplied by V2G cars could reach 1.2 gigawatts of power on demand by 2030, equivalent to a power station. It forecasts that could grow to as much as 41 GW by 2050, enough to meet more than a quarter of peak energy demand.